Alexis Dudden
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I PRESS HONOLULU
===
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1ntroduction I
I Illegal Korea 7
2 International Terms of Engagement 27
3 The Vocabulary of Power 45
4 Voices of Dissent 74
5 Mission Legislatrice 100
Coda: A Knowledgeable Empire 131
¶'Totes 147
Bibliography 185
Jndex 209
Acknowledgments
7 am grateful to too many teachers, friends, and family members for these few paragraphs to suffice, and many of these people fall into each category anyway, so my attempts are muddled from the start. I simply wish that I could win the lottery and get everyone together for a "Babette's feast" to thank you all.
Tetsuo Najita is a wonderful historian, and I will always be lucky to call him my adviser. Prasenjit Duara and Bruce Cumings challenged and expanded my questions in ways that I still haven't begun to address, and Norma Field demonstrated the importance of examining the world with compassion at all times. Carol Gluck and Jim McClain were my first teachers of Japan, and in many ways they brought this book into being. Bill Sibley showed that without friendship there is no use for any of it, and Igarashi Akio remains too generous with time, space, and sake to thank in words.
Any mistakes are, of course, mine, but Andre Schmid is responsible for this book. As I was blithely heading off to graduate school, he told me that I would never understand modern Japan without studying Korea. He was right, of course, but I didn't know why until Han Suk-Jung became my teacher and friend and explained to me the human dimensions of Japan's empire and the world in its wake. In this regard, I will also always look forward to learning from Melissa Wender.
Geoff Klingsporn, Mark Schmeller, Alexandra Gillen, and Linda Zuckerman were the best friends, critics, and sparring partners that anyone could hope for during the delights of writing a dissertation. Chris Hill, Sarah Thai, Jonathan Field, Billy Hinton, Paul Gilmore, Sarah Rose, Kevin Bogart, Mark Bradley, Lydia Liu, Namhee Lee, David Ambaras, David Leheny, Angus Lock‑
ix
X 2cknowledgments
yer, Doug Howland, Tanaka Shinichi, Rob Oppenheim, Amanda Seaman, Sarah Frederick, Kris Troost, Karen Wigen, Mark Lincicome, Andy Gordon, Mark Selden, and especially Mark Caprio and Mike Molasky offered advice, music, and humor throughout this project, and the big Australian cane toad, Hayden Lesbirel, gave strength and friendship as things got a little more exciting than usual toward its end.
Colleagues and students at Connecticut College have been tremendously helpful during a series of tar pits encountered on the road toward this book, and I am especially grateful to Lisa Wilson, Marc Forster, Cathy Stock, Sarah Queen, Tristan Borer, Janet Gezari, Lorraine McKinney, Alex Hybel, Tony Cru-baugh, and Jeff Lesser. Support from Connecticut College as well as the Ful-bright board, the Mellon Foundation, the University of Chicago, and the NEH made it all possible. My late colleague at Seoul National University, Kim Jang-kwon, and the students in our seminar suffered through the manuscript's final stages with me, and I will always be especially thankful to them, as well as to Professor Kim Ki-seok, for inviting me there.
In uncanny ways, Sam Perry has been with me since the conception of these pages, and there will always be a Sam Suite waiting for you, provided, of course, that we can race off at a moment's notice to places of nationalist frenzy wherever we are. Kobayashi Tsuyoshi, Takahashi Tin, Sakamoto Ayumi, the Yoshidas, and Kodama Nobuko made making this book a lot more fun. So did Song Daehon, and I promise that the next one won't make your eyes go round in circles. What he doesn't know, though, is how much better the book is now than it was before Madge Huntington, Joe Parsons, Suzy Kim, Karen Kodner, Ann Ludeman, and my excellent editor, Patricia Crosby, took charge.
My Japanese parents, the Ichinoses, have been a home away from home for years, and my grandmother, Muzzie, was patient throughout. Adrianne and Arthur Dudden have been supportive beyond understanding, and I dedicate the following pages to them.
Finally, there is no way to thank Robert Gay. We'll just have to have dinner together.
flapan's Colonization ofI(orea
1ntroduction
Translating international law into Japanese and using its terms in practice were among the most transformative aspects of Japan's Meiji era (1868-1912). Doing so gave Japanese rulers a new method of intercourse with the United States and Europe and enabled them to reorder the vocabulary of power within Asia. Moreover, this discourse inscribed the legitimacy of Japan's empire from the time of its creation.
Although historians of modern Japan have long studied the staggering changes in Japan's social, political, and economic fabric at the turn of the last century, they have paid less attention to the internal discourses that arose as Japan's leaders described the country anew. To neglect these discourses is to ignore a critical element in the making of imperial Japan. The island nation had intentionally isolated itself for centuries, and the Meiji government used new discourses so that Japan would make new international sense, at a time when not making sense in this manner rendered a nation ripe for colonization. In the terminology of the day, the world's emerging colonial powers viewed countries that shunned specific forms of international relations—particularly commercial relations—as "backward" or "barbaric."
In the face of new global terms of power, Tokyo policymakers created language to describe Japan's rapid industrialization, mass militarization, and territorial expansion. The challenge for these officials was to craft a vocabulary that was consistent both with traditional Japanese practices and Japan's new aspirations, and that was, furthermore, intelligible to an international audience. The encoders of Japan's new place in the world never defined themselves collectively, but their efforts converged along mutual lines. The resulting dis‑
2 'introduction 'Introduction 3
courses captured foreign terms to the fullest extent possible and presented Japan's new policies as legitimate. In the process, the policymakers created perceptions of the justness of imperialist practices around the world at the time. Thus, rather than distinguishing the Japanese empire from others, these efforts confirmed Japan's place in the international history of global empire.
Unlike other diplomatic histories and imperialism studies, this book traces the construction and dispersion of terms that are too often considered trans-historical. Many scholars have ignored Japan's discursive shift in this regard by assuming the naturalness of concepts such as sovereignty and independence, or they have blurred Japan's intellectual history by describing the transition as yet another example of the "copycat Japanese Writing treaties and conducting diplomacy was by no means a new practice in Meiji Japan, but executing such transactions in the language of international law required new techniques. The scholars and state aggrandizers who translated international terms into Japanese did not create the imperialist nation that Japan would become. Their fluent use of this discourse, however, legitimated Japan's imperialist claims within Japan and abroad.
The Meiji regime's incorporation of Hokkaido (1869), Okinawa (1871), Taiwan (1895), and the southern part of Sakhalin (1905) into the Japanese empire laid the groundwork for later imperialist expansion. Although Japan did not officially annex Korea until 1910, throughout the late nineteenth century, Meiji rulers in Korea vied doggedly with Europe and the United States over strategic privileges, mining and railroad rights, and souls to proselytize. Because it was important for Japan to engage other nations in competition, Meiji officials recognized that the need was more critical for Japan's new policies toward Korea to make sense than for the country's other colonial schemes. Within Japan's expanding empire, therefore, the annexation of Korea significantly established the perceived legitimacy of Japan as a modern imperial nation. During the years between Japan's opening of Korea in 1876—an opening that self-consciously mimicked the U.S. opening of Japan in 1853—and Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910, Japan's legal theorists, politicians, and translators defined the country's Korean policy as legitimate under international law. The international arena's quick and formally uncontested sanction of this act in 1910 confirmed the significance of these endeavors to Japan's future empire.
In the chapters that follow, I examine the discursive aspects of Japan's annexation of Korea, with particular attention to the international legality of that moment. The international politics of imperialism taught Meiji state aggrandizers that, if they were to gain full legitimacy for Japan as a colonizing nation, they needed to define their policies in mutually referential terms of law. Colonizing politics were above all a reflexive process; therefore, even before Japan annexed Korea in 1910, its leaders determined to demonstrate that their nation had embarked on a legal and often legislating mission—a mission legislatrice—to Korea. Japan's endeavor to make its annexation of Korea legal in the eyes of the international community brings into relief a forgotten, yet highly significant, component of the process of Japan's development as an imperialist power at the outset of the twentieth century.
History largely recounts the dominator's story at the expense of the dominated. Nevertheless, looking at it here brings to light numerous overlooked presumptions of the so-called international system while describing Japan's engagement with that system, and it is only by following this story that it is possible to imagine writing the script anew for a more balanced world.
Japanese and Korean readers are sufficiently aware of this topic and are not surprised by the question, "Was Japan's annexation of Korea legal?" In fact, they might be tired of it. A reader from a so-called Western narrative tradition, however, might be taken aback to learn that this question not only resonates in daily life in these countries but also periodically explodes into major diplomatic and political incidents. Such a reader might be tempted to dismiss the problem as local or, worse, "Asian' when in fact it entwines with histories of imperialism around the world, raising questions about how related issues linger in contemporary international relations.
Since the collapse of Japan's empire in 1945, Japan's and Korea's respective stances on the question of the 1910 annexation have been, at different moments and on different levels, at the core of national self-definition. To varying degrees, the official Japanese response maintains that the annexation was legal. The "party line" necessitates that Japan simply did what the other imperialist nations of the world were doing at the time. The logic is not wrong per Se, but almost sixty years after the end of the empire this line of argument merely perpetuates the "authorized" view of the twentieth century, which continues to present Japan as a victim of the times. Conversely, and almost without exception, the official Korean position is that the annexation in 1910
was illegal. This position, however, is made more complex by the fact that South Korea and North Korea—two governments that remain officially at war
today—speak in unison on an issue that arguably contributed to the civil war that divided them. One of the most cogent points of agreement in current Korean reunification talks categorically declares Japan's past colonization of
4 'Introduction 'Introduction 5
the Korean peninsula as "illegal' thus sidetracking the sticky issue regarding which Koreans benefited from Japan's rule.
Unfortunately, therefore, the debate over annexation follows an endless Möbius strip, but it is vital to consider this seemingly endless question anew because the dispute lies at the heart of many postcolonial and postenslavement claims now heard throughout the world. Simply put, it is necessary to alter the question and examine what constituted legal at the time in order to understand what was upheld as legitimate practice.
Several groundbreaking works have analyzed Japan's annexation of Korea and Korea's place in Japan's empire, but the field continues to be ensnared in a logic that measures Japanese imperialism against apparent Western norms.' The failure to incorporate Japan's empire into general theories of imperialism remains a fatal flaw of such studies and of international studies in general.2 Specialists on imperialism and Japan alike stumble by overlooking the Japanese empire or assuming that anyone who is interested can plug the empire's history into European theoretical models, which sustains the idea that Japan's experience is somehow less than that of places where history is presumed to have occurred normally. It is possible, however, to circumvent this problem by analyzing how the terms of international law entered modern Japan's discourse of power. The thinkers and translators who refracted international law into Japanese knew that its original terms were European, but many believed that making these terms Japanese would define Japan as a member of the "civilized world'
By illustrating the fusion of power and words, this book aims to confound the view that only military strength truly prevails in power politics. Within an astonishingly short period of time, the Meiji government wrested the privilege of defining legal concepts away from China and conferred on Japan the status of being Asia's twentieth-century arbiter of power. The international colonial order of knowledge legitimated Japan's annexation of Korea and gave basis to the racially charged assumptions of international exchange at the time. In chapter 1, I describe the global atmosphere that declared Japan the legal ruler of Korea. Chapter 2 frames the significance of the discourse of international law with a brief intellectual history of how its terms became Japanese. In chapter 3, I bring together these discussions by analyzing how Meiji Japan's leaders embedded this discourse into legal precedent for Japan, particularly in the country's relations with Korea. Chapter 4 considers how the Meiji government penalized critics at home and abroad when their understandings challenged state definitions. And, in chapter 5, 1 analyze the relationship between percep tions of Japan as a legal nation and the government's reordering of the terms of jurisprudence within Japan and Korea, focusing in particular on how such perceptions related to extraterritorial privilege.
In a fulsome concluding section, I square the book's examination of the legality of Japan's imperialist designs by discussing the place of colonial policy studies in Japan at the time. In so doing, I demonstrate how this new discipline further created a common sense that Japan's empire accorded to knowledgeable practice. Although the international arena sanctioned Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910, later on, when Japanese leaders maintained that their empire's extension into parts of north China was similarly legitimate, Japan's former allies began to oppose Japanese imperialism and militarism. In the argument of the day, relations devolved into a devastating but inevitable war to stop Japanese expansion, and the book closes on this point of tension.
Although it is tempting to declare colonial conquest illegal at any time, doing so will not calm the memories of colonial oppression or eradicate the existence of related and ongoing forms of domination. To these ends, we continue to need a more sophisticated understanding of how power works. The pages that follow explore how imperialism's apologists described the legality of their enterprise, attempting to weigh the implications of their actions in the international arena of the early twentieth century and beyond.
CHAPTER I
ILLEGAL KOREA
¶In the summer of 1907, the world declared Korea illegal. The previous autumn, Emperor Kojong of Korea sent three representatives on his behalf to the Second International Conference on Peace at The Hague. Their mission was to register the emperor's protest against Japan's 1905 protectorate agreement over Korea. According to the well-known account of their travels overland to Europe, Yi Sangsol, Yi Jun, and Yi Uijong reached the Netherlands in late June 1907, during the second week of the conference. They carried a letter from their emperor detailing the invalidity of the protectorate and demanding international condemnation of Japan.' Although the three young men appealed to diplomats from countries that had long-standing relations with Korea, none except the Russian envoy gave them more than a passing notice. Not coincidentally, of course, Japan's shocking military victory against Russia two years earlier made St. Petersburg eager to support any protest of Japan.
On arriving at The Hague, the Korean emissaries confronted a belief system to which even the Russians had acquiesced. According to the terms of international law—the same ones used to script the conference at The Hague and legitimate the participant states—the Koreans could not legally attend the forum. The Portsmouth Treaty of 1905 secured peace between Japan and Russia, granted Japan the privilege to "protect its interests in Korea' and garnered a Nobel Peace Prize for President Theodore Roosevelt, who orchestrated the negotiations.2 Shortly thereafter, the Second Japan-Korea Agreement named Korea a Japanese protectorate and gave international legal precedent to Japan's control over Korea's foreign affairs.3 As a result, the Koreans could not conduct their own foreign relations. Instead, all of Korea's foreign affairs would be con‑
7
8 fJapan's Colonization of Korea Illegal Korea 9
ducted by Tokyo. According to international law, without Japan, Korea no longer existed in relation to the rest of the world.
At The Hague, the Koreans' appeal was collectively shunned by the delegates sent from the forty-three countries discussing world peace. The Koreans' attempt to protest—to tell their story—interfered with the world order that the delegates sought to legitimate. According to anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouilot, some historical moments run so deeply against prevailing ideologies that they are "unthinkable." In these situations, Trouillot notes, "worldview wins over the facts. "4
Because the Korean envoys demanded rectification in the very terms that oppressed them, they were unable to bring the international community to recognize Korea as an independent country. As a result, their story was "unthinkable" to the organizers of the conference. Conversely, recognition of the Koreans' claims to independence would have dismantled the worldview that not only determined Korea's dependence on Japan but also legitimated the conference's claim to define the meaning of international peace. In practice, of course, this definition of peace meant that certain countries legally controlled and colonized others.
In the early twentieth century, colonization was legal under international law in the way that slavery was once legal. The politics and laws of imperialism resembled the politics and laws of the slave trade and arguably developed from them.5 In the mid-nineteenth century, many European and American legal theorists viewed slavery as unfortunate. Nonetheless, they maintained that the practice was for the good of the slaves and that the world's emergent colonial powers operated the slave trade in accordance with prevailing international laws. A large body of literature in political economy and social theory supported these claims. Several decades later, the avatars of imperialism framed the central provisions of international law in ways that defended their activities. It is not surprising then that they, too, relied on a substantial literature to support their belief in the moral value of annexations, protectorates, and spheres of influence. Like the environment embracing slavery, the terrain that grounded imperialism reveals how the politically powerful determined what was legal and protected that legality to uphold their power and self-interests.
A discourse I call "enlightened exploitation" informed this historical atmosphere and encompassed the vocabulary of laws and diplomatic agreements, as well as journalistic accounts describing international relations.6 Various dimensions of this discourse are brought into relief throughout this book, but for now the concept of the "protectorate" can introduce the reach of enlightened exploitation. A diplomatic protocol signed at the Berlin Conference in 1885 defined navigation rights in the Belgian Congo, thus establishing the concept of a "protectorate" as a particular piece of territory governed in part by an alien regime.7 Of equal importance at the time, race-driven theories of civilization more generally shaped a Euro-American political climate that ordered a taxonomy of the peoples of the world. So-called civilized governments predicated their claims to legitimacy on conquering and ruling so-called barbaric ones; such governments also infused their claims with political and social theories derived in part from nascent evolutionary sciences. A regime was civilized only if it could claim the ability to transform an uncivilized people.8 The logic of the politics of enlightened exploitation can be described as the practice of legalizing the claim to protect a place inhabited by people who were defined as incapable of becoming civilized on their own. It was understood, of course, that the protecting regime had access to the material and human resources of the place it protected. Ultimately, the ability to control colonial space defined a nation as "sovereign" and "independent?' Regimes that sought to dominate others legitimated their actions in terms consistent with this intellectual order. Declaring a territory a protectorate did not merely apply a euphemism to the action of taking over; it established a legal precedent for defining certain people unfit to rule themselves.9
Although Japan did not annex Korea until 1910, the fallout from The Hague affair enabled the Japanese colonial regime in Seoul to eviscerate the Korean state by the end of 1907. The judgment at The Hague in the summer of 1907—more specifically, the international turning of a deaf ear to the Koreans—allowed Japanese officials to broaden control of the country on which they and their predecessors had been encroaching for almost fifty years.
In 1876, Japan followed the international pattern of forcibly opening countries to trade by securing the Treaty of Kanghwa with the Chosön government of Korea. As a result of this treaty, Japanese merchants and diplomats moved into extraterritorial settlements in Korea that were legally determined. Following another international practice, Tokyo stationed troops to protect these compounds. The same troops later went to war with China (1894-1895) and Russia (1904-1905) in the name of defending Japanese and Korean national interests. When Japan fought and defeated Russia, it did so, Japan claimed, in order to liberate Korea. Thus, because of its apparent beneficence, Japan received Korea as its protectorate from the international community.
The 1907 Korean mission to The Hague to protest this prize, therefore,
10 Slapan's Colonization of 'Korea Illegal Korea II
embarrassed Japanese officials in front of the nations whose policies they were emulating. They demanded the abdication of the Korean emperor on learning of his secret emissaries. The Japanese officials used pliable Korean government ministers such as Yi Wanyong and SöngBongjun—men often known in Korean history books as "traitors for all times"—by assigning them to urge Emperor Kojong to place his son, Sunjong, on the throne.'° Sunjong, the final sovereign of Korea's Chosön era (1392-1910), embodied "puppet sovereignty" as much as if not more than the better known "Last Emperor" of China, Pu Yi, whom the Japanese controlled in Manchuria in the 1930s." In 1907, the "last emperor" of Korea condemned the men who had gone to The Hague on behalf of his father.
Japan's strong response to the Korean mission centered international attention on Seoul. Comments to the press by Japanese leaders in the summer of 1907 revealed an official self-consciousness that Japan's policies were on display. On July 25, Foreign Minister Hayashi Gonosuke told a reporter from the Associated Press that the Korean mission to The Hague was not a consideration in Japan's desiring a new ruler in Korea, or, for that matter, control over Korea's judiciary. He emphasized instead that "the provisions of the new agreement [July 1907] were not anticipated in the protectorate agreement in 1905, and they complete our project. The Korean deputation to The Hague was inherently unimportant." 12 In short, Hayashi's narrative explained Japan's forced abdication of Korea's sovereign and its takeover of domestic laws as standard operating procedures in colonial politics. His detailed explanations were perhaps unnecessary, since the Times of London had already given its blessing: "We ourselves have had such long experience of dealing with barbaric or semi-barbaric potentates that we can easily appreciate the position of the Japanese in
The Meiji government made the most of the momentum behind its actions, displaying Japan's increasingly exploitative relations with Korea as the natural course of events. Despite the broad implications of the new 1907 agreement between Japan and Korea, no official challenge to its legitimacy arose in the international arena.14 As the world watched and commented on Emperor Kojong's abdication, Japan's Resident General Ito Hirobumi signed papers with Korean Prime Minister Yi Wanyong, transferring all judicial powers in Korea to Japan's command. In the atmosphere that sustained Japan as the legal guardian of Korea, there was only praise for Japan's further means of control: "Under the new Convention, the Marquis Ito's first measure aims at securing life and property in Korea by substituting pure and competent tribunals of justice for the present and unskilled law Courts." 5
Prior to the 1907 agreement, the Japanese government had not publicized the contents of high-level diplomatic exchanges between Japan and Korea. In contrast, from the moment that ItO and Yi affixed their seals to the new convention, officials distributed copies to Japanese and foreign papers.16 In 1905, the small portion of the world that bothered to notice Japan's protectorate agreement over Korea upheld that action, and Korea lost its international existence.17 In 1907, a much larger audience watched what Japan was doing, and it applauded Tokyo's removal of Korea's internal existence. Although a Korean sovereign still sat on the throne, and although the Japanese government demurred that Korea was not officially a Japanese colony, Japanese administrators in Seoul gained control of every office that once constituted a functioning Korea.
The international atmosphere that declared Korea an illegal nation and Japan a legal one bred itself on the erasure of certain countries, similar to the political economy of slavery that labeled some humans the owners and traders of other humans. The discourse of enlightened exploitation gave these actions normative support. Literary critic Nishikawa Nagao has explained that Meiji-era politicians understood that the terms of international law generated a world in which "only European-style, civilized countries were seen as sovereign states. Only these states—the subjects (shutai) of international law —had the right to intervene in or conquer undeveloped or semi-developed countries." 8
During the Meiji period, Japanese state aggrandizers worked to embed Japan as a subject in this international formula of power. At the time, international laws justified colonial control over territory and people as a modern form of enslavement. These laws were upheld and practiced as Japan's law over Korea. When the time came for Japanese officials to appear on the world stage, they knew to manipulate unprincipled Korean politicians (such as Yi Wanyong and Song Bongjun) to do the historically damning work of forcing Kojong to abdicate; by these actions, they functioned as imperialist powers everywhere did, relying on local officials for corrupt tasks. These moves by Japanese officials affirmed the smug "appreciation" felt in England and elsewhere concerning the self-justifying morality of enslaving certain places and people. By such logic, certain countries were not fit to rule themselves, and there was little regard for the coercive methods employed to bring about these conditions.
12 gapan's Colonization of Korea Illegal Korea 13
Most important, Japan's erasure of Korea blended into the era's other "thinkable" stories. With odd resonance for today's world, one commentator
at the time noted that "the oppressed nationalities of the world [who made
their voices heard at The Hague conference] . . . were the Albanians, Armenians, Bosnians, Coreans, Georgians, and Herzegovinians . . . and individual
appeals were received from Boers, Egyptians, and The noticeable
similarities between the "oppressed nationalities of the world" at the beginning of the twentieth century and also the beginning of the twenty-first century convince me that it remains worthwhile to examine how the international arena of 1907 disqualified certain groups from membership and made them legally dependent on those that did belong. This process is, in a word, the focus of this book.
This historical discourse, defining some nations as legal subjects and others as their objects of control, became entwined with the development of global empire. As discourses do, this one worked recursively to confirm itself. Moreover, this discourse upheld imperialist politics as legitimate practice and, in doing so, advanced the expansion of empire. Although it would be a mistake to say that the international terms of enlightened exploitation made nations imperialist, these terms did legitimate imperialist policies as legal. In the age of empire, the nations that defined the language of international relations—and only those nations—were its legal subjects. All the other nations were relegated to legal obscurity.
By way of introducing the environment surrounding Japan's engagement with this discourse of power, this chapter examines world reaction to the failed Korean protest at The Hague. As this historical moment makes clear, the legal erasure of a country and its people could be made legitimate in a relatively open fashion. Beginning in the 1950s with historian Hilary Conroy, American, Japanese, and Korean scholars have described what is now known as "the Korean incident at The Hague" as it played out in official and unofficial chan-nels.20 Although discussing some of the same materials Conroy and others have considered, my reading is unlike theirs in highlighting how the terms of enlightened exploitation had become mundane by the time the Koreans sought to enter the international arena. This international discourse effectively prevented the Koreans from registering their nation as a legal subject, and, through the circular nature of these terms, the Koreans' attempt at legitimacy only reinforced the judgment of Korea as illegitimate. Looking at the event this way illustrates how it was legal for the world to declare Korea illegal, thus pro viding a deeper understanding of what power meant at a given time and place and how it operated.
JAPAN ON DISPLAY
In August 1898, Russia's Tsar Nicholas II expressed a desire for the "Powers" (as the world's colonizing nations called themselves collectively at the time) to hold large-scale arms-reduction talks. The conference's sponsors chose The Hague as their venue, and the world's first self-proclaimed International Conference on Peace opened on 18 May the following year.2' The Russian government decided that only countries with diplomatic representatives in St. Petersburg could attend the conference, thus from the outset limiting participation to states classified as independent and sovereign by international law. In his assessment of the conference several years later, William Hull pointed out that from the start the tsar made random exceptions: "This general rule was not observed, however, in some notable instances, both in extending the invitation to some powers not represented at the Russian Court (for example, Luxemburg, Montenegro, and Siam), and in withholding it from some others which were so represented (for example, the South African Republic). The Russian government did not offer any official statement of the reasons for its inclusions and eXclusions?122
The arbitrary nature of the invitation process is significant. From its founding moments, the organizers of a conference that was a forerunner of today's United Nations made choices that represented de facto the legitimacy and illegitimacy of certain regimes. No other body rivaled The Hague group's powerful claim to decide international policy, and its decisions were legal because no alternate court existed. If any nation lesser than one of the "Powers" tried to call a decision into question, it would only define that regime as illegal or—in today's parlance—as a "rogue" or "outlaw" state.
While the delegates to the 1899 conference congratulated themselves over the state of civilization, issued platitudes about peace, and motioned for another meeting, the Boer War and Japan's war with Russia got in the way of their proceedings and forced the participants to postpone the Second International Conference on Peace until June 1907. The list of delegates attending the second meeting updated the roster of the world's legal nations and set new limits on the international arena. There were twenty parties from Europe and nineteen from the Americas. Persia, Siam, China, and Japan comprised Asia.
14 Slapan's Colonization of Korea Illegal Korea 15
Apparently, no legal nation existed in Africa, a decision confirmed by the group's refusal of the envoy from Egypt.
In 1899, representatives had gathered at a small royal palace on the outskirts of the city, but in 1907 organizers felt they needed a larger building, both for the increased number of delegates and the grander expectations of the meeting itself. As the president of the conference, Alexander Nelidoff, proclaimed, "All friends of civilization are following with sympathetic interest' the meeting opened in an austere, thirteenth-century hunting lodge, the aristocratic Ridderzaal (Hall of Knights).23 Jonkheer van Tets, the Dutch foreign minister, told a reporter that "the hail seemed to us to be worthy to receive the Second Peace Conference' and an editorial in the Times of London called the conference "a contemporary Areopagus' referring to the ancient Athenian council.24 Van Tets also suggested that the building would "acquire a fresh historical fame which will exceed the limits of [its] national history now that within its walls the most completely representative assembly of countries in the world. . . will have been deliberated?'25 The meeting's promoters assumed that the authority of their actions made their endeavors legitimate, and on the conference's opening day, an article in the Times described the scene:
[The Ridderzaai], the meeting place of the Conference, dates from the 13th century and was built by William II, Count of Holland and King of the Romans. It is a long, high-roofed edifice and resembles a church with its two round towers flanking the principal entrance. The interior is imposing by reason of height and simplicity. The massive crossed beams that support the roof are of unpolished wood, and the only decoration of the whitewashed walls consists in the arms of the different States of the Netherlands emblazoned on the stone supports of the roofing. The floor of the hail is fitted throughout with desks and benches covered with green velvet. 26
Comparing the structure to a church gave a higher moral foundation to the convention. Plush benches dissected the holy space and mapped out the hierarchy of national delegates. As at the first conference, the common language was French, and nations were listed alphabetically by their French names. Hull noted that even "the alphabet favored the large powers by bringing their delegates to the front.. . the Germans, Americans, and British occupied the first row of seats—still in alphabetical order." 27 By July, coal magnate Andrew Carnegie was so pleased with what he was reading in the papers and hearing
from friends that he gave the Dutch government one- and- a- quarter million dollars to construct a new and permanent building for future meetings.28
Japanese delegates came daily to the Hall of Knights, resplendent in their morning coats and top hats, and participating as subjects in international law. The Korean envoys, on the other hand, even in their suits, could not exist in the same space, and their protest does not appear in the official proceedings.29 This moment is crucial to understanding how the erasure of Korea took effect. No judge at The Hague sat behind a bench to try a case called "the legality of Korea." But then again, no judge had tried the infamous country-swapping cases two years earlier: the Taft-Katsura meeting (July 1905), in which the United States and Japan traded the Philippines for Korea; and the Second Anglo-Japan Alliance (August 1905), in which Japan and England exchanged Korea for India and Burma.30 The delegates who determined the survival of Korea officially represented their governments, but the authority they summoned to erase Korea transcended national levels and rested with the presumed power of international law. When the Korean delegates tried to make their appeal in the summer of 1907, the faceless judge of this higher authority no longer recognized the existence of their country. The law's earthly rep-resentatives—the "knights" at The Hague—ignored the Korean plea, and they made their decision a legal determination.
Journalists from countries whose delegates sat at the front of the conference sensationalized the Korean mission and in general agreed with their nation's representatives about the nonviability of Korea. Their dispatches worked to further inscribe the legitimacy of The Hague delegates' determination about Korea vis-à-vis Japan for readers around the world. The news generated constant publicity about the conference itself, ensuring the "historic fame" its leaders craved.3' Both the press coverage of the Korean envoys' attempted entry to the conference and Japan's reaction reveals how commonplace the discourse of enlightened exploitation had become.
The tonal similarity of newspaper articles throughout the so-called civilized world demonstrates that a specific discourse had arisen with the development of knowledge about colonization. David Spurr has described this as a "series of colonial discourses marked by internal repetition, but not by all-encompassing totality- "32 The notion of "internal repetition" usefully explains how, for example, newspapers around the world printed articles that communicated the justness of Japan's control of Korea, a topic that had little concerned them before. A rhetoric of social Darwinism permeated news stories
16 fJapan's Colonization ofI(orea Illegal Korea 17
throughout Europe and the United States and sustained the racially driven credo preached by champions of enlightened exploitation: a vigorous people legitimately controlled a stagnant one. Only Russian newspapers condemned the Japanese government's handling of the Korean secret mission; as mentioned above, this was not surprising in light of lingering animosities from. the countries' recent war to gain control of Korea.33
In newspapers in London, New York, Paris, Frankfurt, and Shanghai, the discourse of enlightened exploitation colored descriptions of the Korean ruler, the Korean people, and how Koreans contrasted with Japanese. In this era of purposeful progress, Emperor Kojong was, for example, "an Oriental despot of the weaker type?'34 Korea was "amongst the most antiquated of Oriental States a by-word for immovable and unreasonable conservatism." 35 In London, the Korean emperor was seen as a "backward Sovereign' "foolish;' and 1'fatuous."36 In Paris, he was "a sovereign out of an operetta. . . incapable of initiative, energy, [or] Will ?'37 After the Japanese secured Kojong's abdication, the New York Times condescended, "Upon the whole, the poor man is in a less pitiable state now?'38 A report from Frankfurt declared that the new emperor had "a character as tractable as India rubber."39 A Frenchman confirmed this view: "[Sunjong] used to follow his father about like a dog, never showed the slightest energy or initiative. "40 In the racial typology underpinning the category of "Oriental despot;' reporters defined the Korean people as one with their sovereign. An editorial in Paris's Le Temps declared that the "passivity of the Korean people" rendered them "incapable of all sustained exertion, of all methodical activity."4' Even in an article somewhat sympathetic to the plight of the Koreans, their primary defect—according to world opinion—surfaced: "There is, to be sure, much evidence to show that the Koreans, at least the ruling caste, are incapable of carrying on a civilized government."42 The vocabulary used in the New York Tribune was clearest of all: "The Law of survival of the fittest prevails among states as well as among plants and animals. Corea has been conspicuously unfit.
"43
The decision by The Hague delegates to deny the Koreans a voice at the peace conference proved sufficient for the journalists, who described Korea as a nation Japan should control. Reporters at once explained and confirmed the common understanding of this determination. In the logic of the survival of the fittest, Japan's control of Korea was "nothing else than the. . . dominance of a people incredibly clever and strenuous over one which has never stirred out of the sloth of ages, "44 Informed assumptions about colonizer and colonized were manifest in comparisons of the Koreans and the Japanese. These descriptions placed Japan alongside European countries as a colonizing nation. In light of Korea's past, Le Temps praised, "All travelers and those knowledgeable about Korea are amazed at what has been accomplished in the country since the Japanese established themselves there."45 A German newspaper held "a benevolent admiration for the imperturbable decision with which Japan [was] asserting her treaty rights."46 In a somewhat cynical, yet revealing, comment, the New York Times wrote, "Ito may say of Korea what Metternich boasted of Italy, that he has reduced it to a 'geographical expres-sion."47 An English-language paper in Shanghai echoed these sentiments: "In the best interests of the world at large such nations [Korea] had better be wiped off the map, and we do not blame Japan for wiping Korea off the map.1148 Perhaps Britain's extensive treaty connections with the Japanese government encouraged the Times to express the fullest esteem for Japan's actions, affirming that Japan's "reputation as a colonizing Power [was] at stake?'49 Popular international approval for Japan's increasing control over Korea demonstrates that, by 1907, Meiji leaders had won support for their policies in Korea, legitimating the ongoing process of "wiping Korea off the map?"
The major Japanese newspapers chronicled The Hague affair largely by echoing the international press and government decrees.50 A few editorials elaborated on Japan's actions as a legal matter, such as Nakamura Shinichi's pedantic explanation of how Japan's Korea policy fit into the international system of protectorate arrangements.51 And although most of Japan's domestic press followed events such as Kojong's forced abdication with studious understatement, one paper refused to toe the party line and ridiculed the entire affair. In a series of cartoons printed between 18 July and 3 August 1907, the Yorozu ChöhO portrayed what it saw as the absurdity of the Japanese government's efforts to control its "reputation as colonizing Power?'52 Kuroiwa Ruikö, the editor of the paper, was known not so much for consistent political views as for being categorically anti-elitist, and the drawings in his paper reflect this by lampooning the self-declared altruism of the international political order and Japan's desire to exist as a subject in that order.53 The paper's cartoonists depicted Japan's hypocrisy in wanting to be a member of a group that justified the superiority of nations in ways that would—if pushed—exclude Japan from membership.54
The first cartoon in the series (Fig. 1) shows Japanese Resident General Ito Hirobumi dressed in a kimono, like an old woman, and chasing after a ragged Korean man. The Korean figure, drawn with the body of a small child and wearing no shoes, might represent either the emperor or one of the envoys
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sent to The Hague.55 ItO Hirobumi (1841-1909), the "George Washington of Japan' was one of the chief architects of the Meiji government and arguably the most powerful politician of the era. The cartoonist nonetheless saw him and his pretensions as ridiculous. As the kimono-clad ItO chases the diminutive Korean, the Korean runs to four tall men in suits (Euro-Americans), standing in the background and laughing. The caption chastises, "Grandma isn't too smart letting you out looking so shabby!" In another drawing, Ito and Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Gonosuke sit behind the wheel of a roadster and drive over dogs labeled Kan and Mm (the "Korean people"). In yet another cartoon, the former emperor of Korea acts as a puppet-master, manipulating strings attached to his son, the new emperor.
The final drawing in the series features a handsome, young Japanese man dressed in a formal kimono and an imported hat, standing next to a pretty, smiling Korean woman (perhaps his wife) who wears the native Korean han-bok and demurely nods toward the man. Their newborn baby (whose gender is not identified) is securely in the man's arms, and the words Shin KyOyaku ("New Agreement") run down its back, referring to the July 1907 accord giving Japan control of Korea's domestic laws. To the side stands a tall Russian naval officer, hands trembling and sweat beading on his face, as he observes the moment. The caption reads, "When this happens, absolutely nothing can be done." The colonizer radiates a stereotypical masculine dominance, while the colonized shows only feminine compliance. The youthful couple and the product of their union contrast sharply with the teetering Russian, pointing
Image
FIGURE I. A cartoon from Yorozu ChOho, 18 July 1907
to how the times have changed and the dynamics and locus of power have shifted.
Despite the biting satirical nature of this series of cartoons, it is critical to understand that they and their creators—similar to the Korean secret envoys to The Hague—tried to tell a story that was "unthinkable" to most Japanese. In contrast, pictures such as the one featured on this book's cover described the "thinkable" story of the day. By the time the Yorozu ChOhö cartoonists criticized the underlying assumptions of Japan's new international relations, many Japanese had come to believe fervently that their country had already become or was about to become a powerful imperialist nation, deserving of its status. Popular woodblock prints, such as Kobayashi Kiyochika's depiction of the Japanese army bombarding the Chinese at Pyongyang in 1894 (featured on this book's jacket), appeared widely in Japanese newspapers around the turn of the century. Often, they were sold separately, sometimes with print runs exceeding 100,000 copies.56
Pictures such as these recounted to Japanese throughout the country the enormously popular story of Japan's growing international success, a story that unwittingly fueled moments such as the widespread protests in Japan following the country's victory over Russia. The Hibiya Riots, as they are collectively known, arose first in the fall of 1905 in downtown Tokyo when the terms of Japan's peace settlement with Russia became public. Not satisfied with mere protectorate rights over Korea, tens of thousands took to the streets to clamor for more war prizes for Japan. Many felt they had sacrificed their own lives and the lives of relatives to win what proved to be a terribly costly war in terms of domestic resources and casualties (a belief repeatedly reinforced in woodblock war prints).57 Protests against what were seen as the paltry spoils spread throughout major cities in Japan. Police arrested more than two thousand demonstrators in Tokyo alone, where at least seventeen died in the rioting. It is important for our discussion to understand that the Hibiya protesters were not angry that Japan wanted to participate as a subject in the international arena, nor were they upset that Japan wanted to control Korea. They were angry because, while the price of rice skyrocketed at home, their government was not winning a larger share of international status, which was to them the "thinkable" outcome.58 As a result, Japan's increased concessions over Korea during the summer of 1907—the "New Agreement"—seemed to many a matter of course, if not belatedly gained or granted.
In the immediate aftermath of The Hague affair in 1907, the Japanese government formally took charge of defining its Korean policies to the world
20 Japan's Colonization of Korea Illegal Korea 21
community in what can only be described as the self-conscious language of colonial power. The Japanese colonial regime in Seoul decided to begin publishing English-language reports detailing its Korean policies. By having printed explanations ready, Japan sought to avoid being unprepared when foreigners asked questions about its policies in Korea. With these reports, Japan set the terms for any discussion of its policies in Korea that might arise, enabling the Japanese government to control some of the uncertainty that attended journalistic inquiry. For example, following quickly on the Korean mission to The Hague, "His Imperial Japanese Majesty's Residency General" (or "H.I.J.M's. R.G."), as Ito called himself in English, published the first copy of the Annual Report for 1907 on Reforms and Progress in Korea. The project was so successful from the start that it was pursued annually until the collapse of the Japanese empire in 1945.'
Although many scholars have read through these annual reports for statistical information, they have downplayed the historical value of the texts themselves because of what they view as their propagandist nature. The propaganda aspect of the Report, however, offers the key to understanding how Japan's official narration of its Korean policies meshed with other nations' colonial discourses, both official and unofficial. For example, the Japanese government relied on formats to describe its policies that the British used in India and that the French used in Algeria, and the Report's authors established a congruence of meaning for Japan's colonial policy in Korea through the use of similar terms.
The Report flaunted Japan's efforts in Korea as a wholly civilizing endeavor, a mission civilisastrice. One of the compilers of the 1907 Report was a young bureaucrat named Hishida Seiji. Hishida began working at the Japanese Foreign Ministry shortly after receiving his doctorate in political science in 1905 from Columbia University, where his advisor, the famous international law scholar John Bassett Moore, recommended his dissertation for publication.60 Hishida had thus learned the terminology of great-power politics from one of its leading theorists, and he and those who worked with him in compiling the Report for Ito detailed Japan's relations with Korea for a like-minded—or at least a similarly educated—audience. The Japanese government sent complimentary copies of these reports to governments whose representatives participated in The Hague conference, as well as to major university libraries in some of those countries.6' According to the Report, the Japanese administrators in Seoul sought only to enlighten the Korean people. The 1907 Report (distributed in early 1908), for example, narrated the pains to which Japan had gone to try to make Korea stand on its own in the international arena: "With the hope of making Korea's independence a reality, Japan employed all the resources of friendly suggestion to induce the former to adopt modern civilized methods.... In consequence, however, of jealousy between political parties, nothing resulted but plots and counterplots'62
The Report made clear—to an audience familiar with the Koreans'
"unthinkable" behavior at The Hague just months earlier—that the Koreans were unfit to rule themselves and therefore could not participate as subjects in
international terms: "[After 1905] Japan had now realized that Korea was not
capable of governing herself, and that the policy of maintaining her independence could not be pursued without making certain modifications. . . . Thus
Japan took the responsibility of intervention in Korean affairs, after having
given the Koreans ample opportunity to prove their fitness for self-government, and after having found them wholly unprepared for the task'6' It is not
difficult to discern the self-aggrandizing aspect of the narrative, but it is crucial to understand that, in applying this aspect, the definers of Japan's enlightened exploitation integrated Japan's relations with Korea into a larger international practice.
Within Japan, the government opted for an even showier display of its increasing control over Korea. Between the winter of 1907 and the summer of
1910—approximately the interval between The Hague affair and the annexa-tion—the Meiji government paraded the young Korean crown prince,Yi Yun, on well-chaperoned tours of Japan.64 The planning for this visit, as well as the press coverage of his travels, underscores the confidence with which Japan calculated the international and domestic approval of its erasure of Korea.
In early August 1907, only days after the Japanese government forced the Korean emperor to abdicate in favor of his son, Resident General ItO
announced that he would take the new emperor's ten-year-old brother, Yi Yun,
to Japan to educate him in an "enlightened manner." 65 ItO's plan went forward against the strenuous objection of the boy's mother and various Korean court
officials. On 5 December 1907, an entourage including ItO, the prince, two
Korean court-appointed teachers, retainers, and guards set sail from Incheon to Shimonoseki. Several months prior to the Korean prince's departure for
Japan, the Japanese crown prince (the future emperor TaishO) had visited Korea himself, and so Japanese newspaper readers had grown accustomed to following such tours. Unlike the Japanese prince's visit to Korea, however, neither the Korean prince nor his guardians wanted to go to Japan, a point most Japanese never knew.
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In the case of Yi Yun, Japan's actions certainly could be described as a form of kidnapping. What is more interesting, though, is the extent to which the
Japanese government did not hide its actions, but rather displayed its prize. By educating the boy in Japan in an "enlightened manner' the Meiji regime sought to generate domestic and international commentary on its relations with Korea. Two weeks after leaving Korea, the prince and his entourage arrived at Tokyo's Shimbashi Station to great fanfare.66 With the Japanese crown prince at the head of the line, hundreds of well-wishers, including members of the Japanese imperial court's council, cabinet dignitaries, and school groups, as well as countless passersby, heralded the boy's arrival.
The significance of this event cannot be overstated. After centuries of Chinese dominance in East Asia—a region whose source of knowledge was located in the Chinese emperor's residence—for the first time Japan claimed the privilege of instructing a continental prince in an "enlightened manner." The era of colonizing politics did not inaugurate the practice of capturing foreign princes for political ends, but, in the discursive practices of enlightened exploitation, educating a foreigner of royal blood in the colonizer's capital city defined and sustained notions about higher levels of civilization vis-à-vis the visitor's homeland.67
At this point, the Japanese government seized its advantage. Japanese leaders from the imperial couple down through the ranks of local government employees manipulated the boy's seemingly innocent presence to anthropomorphize Japanese-Korean relations for the benefit of spectators and newspaper readers throughout Japan. What could have been better material to work with than a barely adolescent boy with regal manners who spoke only a few sentences of imperially inflected Japanese?
Following the formula concocted by Meiji statesmen in the 1870s to explain the then-new Japanese emperor's political existence to his unaware subjects, between 1908 and 1910 the Japanese government organized lavish tours throughout Japan for Yi Yun. Also following earlier practice, Japanese taxpayers footed the bill for the Korean prince's travels throughout Hokkaido, Aomori, Akita, Sendai, Morioka, Fukushima, Kansai, and the San-in Coast. Apparently Yi Yun and his guides enjoyed some places so much that his hosts took him two and even three times. Historian Takashi Fujitani has explained that the Meiji emperor's tours in the 1870s served to "bring the emperor down from a godly presence 'above the clouds' in Kyoto to become an active and visible agent in politics."68 In 1908, the Japanese government did not need to bring the Korean prince down to earth, as it were, but it similarly needed to integrate him—on behalf of his country—into the realm of politics as usual for Japan, a politics that increasingly meant Korea as part of Japan. At each stop on Yi Yun's tours, local officials constructed elaborate welcome arches with Japanese and Korean flags and orchestrated their townspeople into cheers of "banzai," dances, and military drills in his honor. Although the process of introducing the prince followed the same methods as those used to introduce the young Japanese emperor in the 1870s, local dignitaries and newspaper reporters added an important new component to the mix. The Korean prince, they emphasized, had come to Japan to obtain an education similar to what all subjects of a rapidly "enlightening" Japan were by then privileged to receive.69 Riding the still-surging patriotic waves that followed Japan's victory over Russia, the Meiji government proudly displayed its control of Korea.
The Japanese people who gathered at train stations from Nemuro to Mat-sue to Nagoya may have known little, if anything, of the Korean mission to The Hague, who Sunjong or Kojong was, or how this boy Yi Yun fit into the puzzle. Even if they did, they might not have cared. As the subjects of Japan welcomed the Korean prince into their neighborhoods, his presence defined and confirmed what local and national officials and journalists were publicizing: their country stood higher on the chain of enlightenment than the boy's native land. The Japanese government did not plot Yi Yun's tours as a covert means to justify the official colonization of Korea two years later. It did not have to. The descriptive reactions to the boy's well-publicized visits solidified into the fact of annexation when it finally took place. As Japanese leaders and newspaper reporters emphasized, Japan had come so far internationally that now foreign royalty came to Japan for enlightenment.
During the first few years of the twentieth century, in the self-legitimated taxonomy of the world's colonizing powers, Korea increasingly ranked as a dependent regime. In what we might productively reconsider as a colonial war, akin to numerous such wars around the world at the time, Japan defeated Russia and won Korea. In 1906, the United States recognized Japan's victory spoils by deleting "Korea" in the U.S. government's Record of Foreign Relations and placing it under the category of "Japan." The change inscribed a shift in political relations that neatly fit into national erasures occurring around the
world at the time, such as those in Hawai'i, New Zealand, and Vietnam. In July 1907, frustrated by their nonreception at The Hague, the Korean envoys set sail for America, hoping to register a formal protest against Japan and plead their
case in Washington, D.C.—a place many believed defined the meaning of independence at the time. When news of the Koreans' departure from London
24 [Japan's Colonization of Rorea Illegal Korea 25
reached U.S. Secretary of State Elihu Root, he resolved that the men would not be received in any official capacity either in Washington, D.C., or in Oyster Bay, where President Roosevelt was spending his summer vacation. The United States, declared Root, "formally recognized the Japanese control of the foreign relations of Korea'
"7°
Analyzing the colonial discourse surrounding Japan's annexation of Korea allows for a new approach to Japan's engagement in the politics of the Great
Game. The following chapters give prominence to an intellectual history of international relations by examining how and when powerful terms of state interaction began to encircle the globe within a reflexive political discourse. To some, an exploration of such terms may seem excessively detailed, and to others it may seem coldly inconsiderate of human suffering, but this discussion is more than an academic exercise. Common understandings of this era in Japanese studies have long relied on theories of imperialism whose composition ignores the Japanese empire.7' Many analyses, for example, trace a century of imperialist historiography by beginning with J. A. Hobson's famous 1902 treatise, Imperialism, never recognizing that the Japanese anarchist Kötoku ShUsui predated Hobson by a year with his own scathing condemnation of colonizing politics, entitled Imperialism: Monstrosity of the Twentieth Century.72 Comparativists and scholars of Japan alike tend to plug Japan into studies of Euro-American colonial projects, measuring Japan's performance against them in some way. Japan was "late." Japan was "similar" or "different." Language difficulties exist to be sure, but they exist for the Japanese scholar as well.
A far deeper problem persists. Historical theories of international relations sustain the Euro-American Powers and their former colonies as the standards by which historical pasts and presents are defined. By neglecting Japan in these formulations, the civilizational project endures. Only the nations first described as civilized manifest a normal history of imperialism.73
Another related problem arises in trying to fit Japan squarely into such existing imperialism studies. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Japan did not come close to the national strength of the "Powers' according to what many historians since Marx—sympathetic and not—have valued as indicators necessary for imperial conquest.74 Further complicating this problem, historians of Japan's imperialist development have divided themselves into fairly entrenched political camps according to whether they agree with or are critical of Lenin's understanding of imperialism. Because the numbers in Japan's case do not easily concur with Lenin's determination of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, scholars from one school of thought have tried to massage official economic statistics in order to amplify their critiques within a larger, Marxist frame of explanation .75Conversely, other historians who are dismissive of Marx—and also, vehemently, of Lenin—tend to revel in official statistics to discount these ideas as wrong-headed, proving that Japan's imperialist efforts were "political" and not "economic" in origin.76 Now, at the beginning of a new century, the first group's line of reasoning feels hackneyed and defeated, while the latter group teeters close to apologism: Japan just did what everyone else was doing.
Japan's imperialist projects were political, but imperialist politics were not discrete from economic endeavors. Reasoning otherwise now works only to privilege twentieth-century Japan as a perennial victim of the times. To describe, for example, Minister of Finance Shibusawa Eiichi's Meiji industrialization plans as "economic" without connecting these plans to the Japanese empire's growth, or to remember ItO's restructuring of Japan into an internationally recognized sovereign state as "political" without acknowledging its economic dimensions, fails to acknowledge the interdependence of these actions. Moreover, separating this history as either economic or political—rather than insisting on both dimensions—encourages contemporary Japanese governments to continue to avoid responsibility for Japan's twentieth century. This history, of course, includes the forcible removal of millions from Korea, China, and elsewhere to work in factories and sex camps throughout Japan's empire. Yet the government of Japan can officially maintain that Japan's empire was politically necessary, and not based on economic considerations; therefore, it maintains that it owes no compensation to its victims.
Ironically, scholars overlooking the historical nature of international terms as useful tools for analyzing Japan's empire risk not only sustaining a sense of the transcendent value of the terms but also reiterate ideologies that once condoned Japan's expansionistic policies. For example, the legal expression "propinquity"—used by the United States government in the early twentieth century to sanction Japan's colonial involvement on the Asian continent—has been recycled into the enduring historiographic explanation of the difference between Japanese imperialism and other nations' imperialist pasts.77 The "japan-as-different-from-the-norm" approach argues that "as the only non-Western imperium of recent times, the Japanese colonial empire stands as an anomaly of modern history. . . . To maximize its strength, the effort to assert its presence in Asia—the creation of empire—would have to begin with the domination over neighboring areas close to home.1178 For many historians,
26 rlapan's Colonization of Korea
this worldview—the "thinkable" story within the field—has defined modern history as Western history, and Japan's past is seen as an aberration within the
expected flow of the linear chronology of modern history. In this book, I
attempt to step around this line of reasoning by not presuming that Japan's colonizing past was a strange occurrence on a predetermined timeline. Japan's
engagement in international terms demonstrates instead how the politics of enlightened exploitation germinated globally in capitalist modernity and how its forms endure.
Meiji political theorist Nakae ChOmin's famous treatise, A Discourse on Government by Three Drunkards (1887), provides a fitting segue into the chapters that follow.79 The book's protagonist, Professor Nankai, holds great faith in the promise of Japan's new place in the international community. In his customary besotted state, he expounds on the possibilities of this world: "Despite the power of survival of the fittest . . . all more or less recognize international law. . . . Moreover, [the four Powers'] duty in maintaining the balance among nations and their agreement to uphold international law secretly binds their limbs." 80 Throughout the Discourse, Nankai describes a social Darwinist world of nations. Despite the intersection of this political theory with the workings of international law, Nankai (and arguably his creator) holds faith in the value of these terms to constrain such voracious appetites, concluding that international law would prevent "smaller nations from being annexed ."8' In practice, however, Japan's engagement with international law afforded the opposite result. As Japan engaged the terms of international law in describing its policies towards Korea, Meiji diplomats and legal theorists forged a legitimated path to the annexation of Korea in 1910.
CHAPTER 2
INTERNATIONAL TERMS
OF ENGAGEMENT
1lnternational terms won the twentieth century. Terms such as independence and sovereignty became the means of discursive exchange in markets and parliaments around the world, but their everyday usage has obscured the historical process that made them the vocabulary of modern international relations. Use of these terms has simply become common sense. The new, post-9/11 U.S. doctrine of "preemptive strike" introduces still-unmeasured dimensions to these terms; yet at the end of the twentieth century, the whole body of international terms was heralded as "the constitution of mankind," upheld by many as an ideal and untouchable form.' Disparate political interests, including the member states of the International Monetary Fund, North Korea's reclusive leader Kim Jong-il, and U.S. militia leaders (who incite fear of the United Nations), all speak in terms of the "sovereignty" of their own "independent" nations. Recent self-determination movements in East Timor and Kosovo defined their wars using these terms—which are the same terms their oppressor regimes used to constitute themselves—further attesting to the power of
these expressions.
In the late nineteenth century, the young Meiji government engaged Japan in international terms, a decision that stands to this day as one of the most significant changes in Japanese modern history. In a short period of time, Japanese officials determined to establish their newly reorganized nation in the terms of international law, thus relocating Japan's place in the world and redefining power in Asia. These terms became Japan's new legal discourse of power. As aggrandizers of the Japanese empire described their policies in this
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